


Listen to your heart

by HiddenTrekker



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Post-Endgame, straight after Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 08:37:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14712764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiddenTrekker/pseuds/HiddenTrekker
Summary: Kathryn is packing up her life on Voyager, memories of the Delta Quadrant play on her mind and feelings for a certain First Officer feature heavily in her musings.





	Listen to your heart

First there was just me, and then there was us, in the end though it was just me again. You were part of them. You didn’t tell me about your new us, I had to find out about that from another me, one that was bitter and twisted, hurt by things in my future that I couldn’t imagine and she was hoping to avoid.

What was it that made her so determined to change her past, my future, for her to turn her back on everything that I still hold so dear. Was it the loss of us? Having to watch you create everything that I had held on to for us for so long with someone else? Someone younger? Someone who I had mentored, almost seen as a daughter, someone who had some of the same traits of her personality that I do?

I don’t know what it was that made me go along with her crazy plan to take on the Borg Queen, one last time, to get us all home 16 years earlier. I want to tell myself that it is because I want to save those other crew members that we lose along the way in her timeline, I tell myself it is because I can’t let Tuvok go insane out here when there is a cure for him within my reach, I tell myself it is because I want to save Seven and give her a chance of happiness in her new individuality. I tell myself all of these things, but if I listen to my heart rather than my gut I know it is because of how she looks at you, that older me. The longing in her eyes for you is something I recognise from my own eyes.

Something about the way she looks at you makes my heart ache for her, I have lived with the hope of getting home and maybe being together, like we have been so close to being out here, but she lived with that hope and then had to let you go to live out my hopes with someone else, only to watch you have to lose her too. I can’t even begin to imagine what that would have done to you, or me, or us. Something from her face tells me that it destroyed what was left of her heart and ultimately they were never the same again.

I pace my quarters, glancing at the long missed stars and ships that I have only dreamt about flying next to us again, and knowing that they are taking us home, to new opportunities for all of us, to freedom from Command, from protocols and parameters that have restricted and ruled my life for the last 7 years.

I should be feeling a sense of accomplishment and relief, of hope and happiness, excitement to see my mother and sister again, to reconnect with friends I thought I would never see again or at least for a long time. Instead I am left feeling a deep sadness, at a loss and a loose end. There is nothing left to drive me forward. We have completed the mission that has occupied my every waking moment for the last 7 years, and now it is done there is only the regret to keep my mind occupied.

Starting to pack my life away in to the containers ready to depart, memories float through my mind. A birthday gift here, a photo there, a pressed peach rose from the time that alien tried to tell me I was dead, those images he showed me still haunt my dreams. Seeing you hunched over my lifeless body begging me to live, crying my name, telling Tuvok I was dead and hearing the hope in your voice in the skills of the EMH. My hand moves against the smooth wood at the bottom of a draw, more treasured and happy memories float to the surface removing the shadow of those before. Memories of bath tubs under a star filled sky, of a monkey, of ancient legends. I don’t know why I kept this piece of the tub, maybe it is because I wanted to keep hold of the life we could have had there. Would we have been happy alone but together, in friendship at the very least? Perhaps something deeper, not something that simply came about because we were the only option for each other if we wanted a family but something that came from love and a want to be together, to build something more for each other, together.

I think that was the first time my heart broke in to 2, one half as Kathryn Janeway and the other as Captain Janeway. That was the first time that I had to build a wall between the 2; A wall of protocol and rules. I had never wanted to hear Tuvok’s voice less but at the same time more. I had wanted you to tell me that you wanted to stay, I had hoped that the cure hadn’t worked, I had wanted to stay, but at the same time I had missed our crew terribly, had missed our ship, our command, the other life we had built together. So we had to leave the life we were building for the one we had already built, the one that needed us back. The crew that needed us back.

Sighing sadly I place the piece of wood in to the box to keep, along with the rose and watch you gave me for my last birthday in the Delta Quadrant, you had told me the story of the old sea captain who had bought his crew home after they were lost, telling me in your own way that you still believed I could do this, could get us all home. The story had touched my heart, even though I have never needed a time piece the meaning behind it meant more to me than the usefulness of the item. It is precious to me because of the faith and trust it shows, the friendship we had built. The photographs taken through the years at parties Neelix had arranged some candid ones from the Doctor and his infamous holoimager; others posed but the poses natural, both gravitating towards the others body.

I pack away my memories in to the physical box I pack them away in to a psychological box too. The hopes that I had once held for us are shattered and need safely packing away along with the others, the other men I have loved and lost over my life. One died with my father, the other believed me dead and moved on, now you, forever lost in friendship to me. I tell myself that at least you will be in my life, and we will always be together in the history books, the Starfleet Captain and the Marquis First Officer who got the lost Voyager home.

As I close the final box and stand, moving across to the replicator, my glorified toaster, and order my usual cup of coffee, my door chimes, and my heart leaps. I know it’s you, and that you are alone, without her.

“Come” and my doors slide open, your familiar frame fills it. I try to act surprised to see you, even though I have been expecting you at some point to arrive at my door.

You step through, and look a little sheepish, but only someone who knows you as well as I do would see that. It is the way that you play with your ear and the slight shuffle of your foot on the carpet.

“Would you like something to drink?” I know you will so move to order you your usual tea, passing the cup to you our fingers touch, energy I have not felt between us sparks. I catch your eyes, the deep brown of them holding more warmth in them than I have seen there for the last year or so. Was that the last time the spark passed between us too?

“Thanks” you choke out, and take a long sip of your tea. I move to my usual position under the viewport, and you move to your normal position on the arm chair facing me. It is strange how these familiar gestures and placements in each other’s private quarters and within each other’s lives could now be coming to an end, more suddenly than either of us had dared to hope.

“I have been speaking to Admiral Paris, and he has ensured me that after the debriefings are over, you and the rest of the Marquis will be free and offered places within Starfleet befitting the rank you all have onboard Voyager... should they want them that is.” Starting to talk about our work is easier for both of us and I know it has always been a worry of yours, how your crew will be received when we made it home, having left as wanted Criminals, after all that is what originally bought us together. _Head to the badlands and apprehend the Marquis leader and his crew_.

“Thank you Kathryn, I know you have been working on securing our future for months, well ever since ‘the Marquis issue’ was bought up by Admiral Hayes.” You say, using my name rather than my rank. “Have you been to see B’Elanna and the baby yet?” You ask, shifting to a more personal but still safe topic.

“Yes, she is adorable.” I smile. Leaning forward I study you, realising that you aren’t going to bring up the real reason you have come here for, so I will have to, once again bridging that wall between Kathryn and Captain. “How is Seven?”

You look up and catch my eyes, surprise registering in your own, you didn’t know I knew. “The Admiral” is all I have to say, both of us knowing I am referring to the older me. The one who was haunted by her life without you; who had risked everything for one last chance to make a better life for every member of her crew, particularly herself and First Officer.

“She is fine I think. We don’t know each other very well.” You watch as hurt and confusion I am feeling crosses my face, knowing you can read me like a book I don’t even bother to hide it from you now. “We have had 3 dates, and if we had stayed in the Delta Quadrant it may have gone further, what with protocols and rules being an issue. Now that we are home again, everything and anything seems possible. Seven decided that she wanted to explore other options that are now open to her; I didn’t try to stop her. There are other possibilities open to me now... open to us”

Placing my cup on the low table in front of me, it will betray the shaking of my hands, a sign of the wall crumbling down. You must have noticed as you hold my hands in your own, the warm bronze of your skin startling against the pale white of my own. “I never stopped being your warrior Kathryn” you say and I realise that you too must have been packing your quarters and wonder what memories you have of that planet, of that life.

“When did I stop being yours?” I ask, remembering more of the legend you told me.

“You still are.” You say, your thumbs running over my knuckles, soothing my racing heart, again showing me that you know me better than I know myself.

“Even after everything....”

“Because of everything. You got them home, you never stopped believing that we would get home, now or in another 16 years” You smile, “But at least with it being now things can change... for the better I hope.” Those hopes I have packed away in my mind start to burst out of the box I had carefully packed them in, suddenly becoming too small to hold them back. Tears prick my eyes and for the first time in a long time I don’t try to hold them back behind the Captain, this time Kathryn is allowed to command.

You lean forward, releasing my hands, raising one up to wipe away the tears that have escaped, my head instinctively moving into your palm, savouring the warmth of your body. My eyes are closed but I know you are closer. I can feel your breath against my lips, warming my skin. Your familiar scent fills my nostrils, a smell that has always calmed me, even in the heat of battle, something I didn’t know how I was going to live without.

When your lips meet my own, it’s not a kiss that I had been expecting. After 7 years of waiting and wanting I had always believed that it would be heated, hard, full of need, instead it is soft, caring and full of love that had remained unspoken, a kiss that is full of promise of those yet to come .

Now I know I should have listened to my heart, because my heart is you.


End file.
